From the New York Times :

Yaphet Kotto, Bond Villain and ‘Alien’ Star, Dies at 81

Well known for playing hardened personalities, he was also seen in movies like “Midnight Run” and the TV show “Homicide: Life on the Street.”


By Neil Genzlinger

    March 16, 2021Updated 6:19 p.m. ET

Yaphet Kotto, a versatile actor whose many roles included the wisecracking engineer in the hit science-fiction film “Alien,” the villainous adversary in the James Bond movie “Live and Let Die” and a police lieutenant on the long-running television series “Homicide: Life on the Street,” died on Monday near Manila. He was 81.

His agent, Ryan Goldhar, confirmed the death but said he did not know the cause. Mr. Kotto had lived in the Philippines for some years.

Mr. Kotto worked mostly in the theater for the first decade or so of his career. His bodily size made him a dominating figure in any sort of role, though it tended to bring him parts as a heavy.

“I’m always called powerful, bulky or imposing,” he told The Baltimore Sun in 1993, when “Homicide: Life on the Street” made its debut. “Or they say I fill up a room. I’m a 200-pound, 6-foot 3-inch Black guy. And I think I have this image of a monster. It’s very difficult.”

In 1969, still largely unknown, he had the formidable task of replacing James Earl Jones on Broadway in “The Great White Hope,” Howard Sackler’s drama based on the life of the boxer Jack Johnson. Mr. Jones had won a Tony Award for his portrayal of the lead character, who in the play is named Jack Jefferson. Mr. Kotto stepped into the role as the production entered its second year, and Clive Barnes, taking a fresh look at the show in The New York Times, was impressed.

“I had never even heard of the Hollywood-based Mr. Kotto,” he wrote. “But luckily someone had, for this is inspired casting, and Mr. Kotto will never be unheard-of again.”

It was two decades before he returned to the stage, and again it was as something of a shadow to Mr. Jones, who had received another Tony playing Troy Maxson in August Wilson’s “Fences” in 1987. Mr. Kotto tackled the role in 1990 at Arena Stage in Washington, again drawing raves.

“Setting the tone throughout is the thunderous Mr. Kotto,” Hap Erstein wrote of that production in The Washington Times, “a caged animal pacing the backyard, a bullying brute more expressive with his hands than his words. Away from the theater for many years pursuing film and TV work, he makes a scorching return to the stage.”
ImageMr. Kotto with Roger Moore in the 1973 James Bond film “Live and Let Die.” It was Mr. Moore’s first film as Bond, and one of Mr. Kotto’s best-known movie roles.
Mr. Kotto with Roger Moore in the 1973 James Bond film “Live and Let Die.” It was Mr. Moore’s first film as Bond, and one of Mr. Kotto’s best-known movie roles.Credit...MGM/UA Entertainment

In between those stage appearances, two movie roles in the 1970s particularly elevated Mr. Kotto’s his profile. The first, in 1973, was in “Live and Let Die,” Roger Moore’s debut as James Bond. Mr. Kotto played his chief nemesis, a dual role in which he was both a corrupt Caribbean dictator and that character’s alter ago, a drug trafficker named Mr. Big.

Then, in 1979, came “Alien,” Ridley Scott’s outer-space horror classic, in which Mr. Kotto’s character, Parker, was part of a spaceship crew doing battle with a nasty extraterrestrial creature.

“The combination punch for my career of ‘Live and Let Die’ and ‘Alien’ was like wham, bam!” he told The Canadian Press in 2003, adding that those wildly different roles showcased his versatility. “I think the only other person who has a combination like that is Harrison Ford.”

Yaphet Frederick Kotto was born on Nov. 15, 1939, in Harlem and grew up in the Bronx. His father, he told The Baltimore Jewish Times in 1995, was from Cameroon and jumped ship as a merchant seaman, ending up in New York; his mother, he said, was of Panamanian and West Indian descent. His father had adopted Judaism, and his mother was Roman Catholic. The couple separated when Mr. Kotto was a child, and he was raised by his maternal grandparents.

Mr. Kotto said his career path was set by a fateful trip to the movies.

“One day, when I was about 16, I walked into this theater showing ‘On the Waterfront’ and I saw Marlon Brando for the first time,” he told The Orange County Register of California in 1994. “I couldn’t speak. It was like somebody had punched me in the stomach. It was like someone had crashed cymbals in both ears. I was blasted out of the theater. I knew from that moment that I wanted to be an actor.”

The actress Judy Holliday saw him in a stage production and became a mentor, he said, “moving me around like furniture, telling me what to eat.” He said his knowledge of Yiddish earned him his only other Broadway credit, in the 1965 production of “The Zulu and the Zayda,” a comedy about a Jewish grandfather who settles in South Africa.

Mr. Kotto received an Emmy nomination for his performance as Idi Amin, the Ugandan strongman, in the 1977 television movie “Raid on Entebbe.” He appeared opposite Robert Redford in the prison movie “Brubaker” in 1980.

In the 1988 action-comedy “Midnight Run,” starring Robert De Niro and Charles Grodin, he played the F.B.I. agent Alonzo Mosely, whose stolen ID becomes fodder for a running joke. And in “The Running Man,” a dystopian 1987 thriller set in what was then the near future (2019), Mr. Kotto played a resistance fighter alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger in a fascist version of America.

Mr. Kotto married three times, Mr. Goldhar said. He and Thessa Sinahon, who is from the Philippines, married in 1998. A full list of survivors was not immediately available.

Mr. Kotto was always conscious of the image projected by his roles, something that led him to reject certain ones.

“I was offered a part in ‘Glory’” — a 1989 movie about a Black company commanded by a white office in the Civil War — “which I refused, because for me it purported to be about a Black experience and was really about the white guy,” he told The Globe and Mail of Canada in 1994. “Do you see me taking orders like that? I couldn’t see myself in ‘Driving Miss Daisy’ either, playing the chauffeur, taking it from some old lady. Some other actor may be able to put that on and make it look real, but I couldn’t do it.”

“Homicide,” a police series that was innovative for its time, was a career high point, running for seven seasons. But things started off badly, Mr. Kotto said.

“The script was so good and the camera work was so different than what I was used to that I forgot my lines,” he told The Register. “I was really embarrassed. That had never happened to me before.

“But the other actors came over to me and told me the same thing had happened to them.”

Mike Ives contributed reporting.